No magic roundabout

I am aware of a petition circulating in Ōmokoroa to construct a roundabout at the intersection of SH2 and Ōmokoroa Road. The intersection is dangerous and needs urgent attention from NZTA staff.

However, I believe that traffic engineering should be treated with the same consideration we treat other professional areas. We do not tell our dentists how to treat root canals, we don’t tell pharmacists how to produce certain medications, and I have yet to see a Letter to the Editor opinion on how best to perform heart surgery. So why offer an opinion on complicated intersection design?

Roundabouts in high-speed environments are complex design elements. What led to the demand for its construction? Was it a lowering of the speed? NZTA can achieve that with a simple speed sign coupled with a fixed speed camera at a fraction of the cost.

I was pleased with NZTA’s announcement of the construction of the Tākitimu North Link. Finally, we seemed to get a

State Highway that deserves that label. The announcement of the cancellation of Stage Two in favour of the Auckland cycle bridge changed my mind into a state of despair.

So reluctantly, despite my misgivings of telling experts how to do their job, and only in an attempt to reduce the public pressure of an ill-conceived idea to build a roundabout in that location, I offer a different intersection design. The design goes some way in achieving the original design objectives at a fraction of its cost. Maybe, there is a way of including it in the Stage One project.

In my defence for giving that advice, I claim that working as a qualified traffic engineer in my early engineering career gives me an understanding and insight into the subject.

My sketch of the intersection design combines two slip lanes and a set of traffic lights. Traffic from Tauranga stays on the existing lane with no interference from intersection movements. Traffic from Ōmokoroa to Tauranga is directed via a newly constructed slip lane, extended to the dual carriageway some 700m further south. Build a median slip lane north to Francis Rd. Traffic lights could control the following movements: Right-hand turn on SH2 from Tauranga into Ōmokoroa Rd, right-hand turn from Ōmokoroa Rd into SH2 slip lane to Katikati, and stop lights for south-bound traffic on SH2 (Katikati to Tauranga) and turning into Ōmokoroa Rd.

Werner Corbe, Ōmokoroa.